Some local campaigners Emma Fricker Hall: Headmistress of a girl’s school. Hosted meetings and flooded the Hastings and St Leonards Observer with letters about votes for women. Cecilia Tubbs: also known as Mrs ‘Colonel’ Tubbs: Suffragist, member of NUWSS, president Hastings and St Leonards and East Sussex Women’s Suffrage Society. Buried Hastings Cemetery. Jane Strickland: Suffragist, member of NUWSS, executive member of Women’s Liberal Federation; chair local branch of Women’s Freedom League; later vice-chair of local Labour Party. Buried in Hastings Cemetery.
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GETTING TOGETHER From the 1870s women began getting together to talk about how they could win the vote. They often met in each other’s houses, throwing open their homes for were known as ‘drawing room meetings’ or ‘at homes’. Women discussed votes for women, formed suffrage committees, drew up petitions and passed resolutions. Drawing room meetings were packed, attracting sympathetic men as well as women. In 1884 nearly 100 people came to a drawing room meeting at Emma Fricker Hall’s home in Pevensey Road, St Leonards. Local committee members were present and Laura Ormiston Chant, a well-known writer and lecturer spoke. The audience included novelist Olive Schreiner and other notable individuals. As suffrage societies opened offices in Hastings, these too were used for meetings or ‘at homes’. By 1912 at least three meetings were taking place every week in Hastings and St Leonards.
